A Principle of The Traditional American Philosophy

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in
man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution" -
Thomas Jefferson (Kentucky Resolutions)

The Principle

1. A main principle of the traditional American philosophy is expressed in the
phrase: fear of Government-over-Man.

Cause of Fear

2. This fear is due to the ever-present, never-changing weaknesses of human nature
in government which are conducive to "love of power and proneness to abuse it,"
as Washington's Farewell Address
warned. This means public officials' human weaknesses, especially as aggravated by the
corresponding weaknesses among the self-governing people themselves. It is a truism that
government's power needs only to exist to be feared--to be dominant, over the fear-ridden,
without ever needing to be exercised aggressively.

Man--Good and Evil, Mixed

3. This philosophy asserts that human nature is a mixture of good and evil, of
strength and weakness, and is not perfectible during life on earth. There is "a
portion of virtue and honor among Mankind" and the better side of Man, the
Individual, can be strengthened and made more dependable through spiritual growth. The
resulting moral development is conducive to sound conduct, in keeping with conscience in
the light of a personal moral code based upon religious-moral considerations. Yet history
teaches that the previously mentioned weaknesses of human nature provide just cause for
never-ceasing fear of Government-over-Man.

Government Like a Fire

4. Americans of the period 1776-1787 firmly believed in the soundness of the
accepted maxim that "government is like a fire: a dangerous servant and a fearful
master;" that, to be useful, it must be strictly controlled for safety against its
getting out of hand and doing great harm. Through the generations, the people have
considered that this maxim expresses one of history's most profoundly important lessons
for Free Man. This maxim is based upon the knowledge that, in last analysis, government is
force and must be feared and controlled accordingly. The great fear in 1787-1788 of the
new, central government under the proposed Constitution was
evidenced by the fact that the State Ratifying Conventions proposed scores of amendments,
designed chiefly to keep under more rigid control what they considered to be this
potential monster of power so dangerous to their liberties: the central, or Federal,
government.

The Views of Jefferson and Madison and the Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions

5. This fear was of abuse by government of power granted to it by the people, as
well as of usurpation by it of power denied or prohibited to it by them, through the
Constitution, to the injury if not doom of their liberties--of the God-given, unalienable
rights of The Individual. Jefferson merely voiced the lesson of history--well known to,
and accepted by, his fellow Americans--when he stated, in the "Diffusion of
Knowledge" Bill in 1779, in the Virginia legislature:

". . . experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government],
those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into
tyranny . . ."

Jefferson also expressed this traditional, American viewpoint in his famous
writing known as the Kentucky Resolutions, as adopted
in 1798 by the Kentucky legislature, in these words in part:

". . . it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our
choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere
the parent of despotism: free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it
is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited Constitutions to bind down those
whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the
limits to which and no further our confidence may go; . . . In questions of power then let
no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of
the Constitution."

These Kentucky Resolutions are closely akin to the contemporaneous Virginia Resolutions of 1798 adopted soon afterward by
the Virginia legislature--written mainly by Madison who was, as usual, in close touch with
Jefferson in this period. Both sets of resolutions were protests against what were
considered and denounced as abuses and usurpations of power by the Federal
government--chiefly through the Alien and
Sedition Laws adopted by Congress in 1798. Such protests by a State legislature were
in keeping with the remedies available to the States in such a situation - remedies
contemplated by The Framers as being within the constitutional system--as discussed, for
example, by Madison in 1788 in The Federalistnumber 46. The Sedition Act was designed to restrict freedom of
speech and of the Press so as to stifle criticism of Federal officials and therefore
grossly violated the Constitution; and it was opposed, for example, by John Marshall, as a
member of Congress, and by Alexander Hamilton--the latter stating: "Let us not
establish a tyranny." (These laws soon disappeared from the statute books, due to
their widespread unpopularity which the above-mentioned 1798 resolutions had helped
initially to foster.)

Precedents for Other States' Protests Such As The Hartford
Convention Resolutions

6. These 1798 protests by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures were not the
first such development in the life of the Republic. A predecessor resolution of protest,
for example, had been adopted by the Virginia legislature in 1790: the "Protest and
Remonstrance" against the assumption by the Federal government of the war-incurred
debts of the States, as being unconstitutional. This protest set a precedent for the
above-mentioned 1798 resolutions. They, in turn, set precedents for similar resolutions of
protest adopted by various States--in New England, the North, the Mid-west as well as in
the South--during the following decades when they considered themselves to be victimized,
potentially or actually, by either abuses or usurpations of power by the Federal
government; such developments being the subject of comment, for example, by former
President John Quincy Adams in his celebrated "Jubilee" address of April 30,
1839. (Some of these later resolutions even relied on the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 as
a precedent.) An example is the set of resolutions adopted in 1815, during the war with
England, by the Hartford Convention--representing Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode
Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire--protesting against what were considered to be Federal
usurpations, potential or actual, regarding use of the States' Militia in war operations
and other national defense matters.

The View of Patrick Henry

7. In the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, Patrick Henry protested with
vehemence against the proposed new Constitution's lack of adequate limits on the central
government's power, lack of sufficient safeguards against governmental abuses due to human
weaknesses among its officials, saying:

"Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people
were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss
of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute
certainty, every such mad attempt." [Click
here to read entire speech - LEXREX]

The
American People's View Also Expressed in the Pittsfield Petition of 1776

8. These quoted sentiments were accepted as maxims by American leaders in general
and by the American people as a whole in that generation of Free Men--free in spirit and
willing to fight and die for their Freedom from Government-over-Man. This acceptance is
illustrated by the below-quoted words of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, town-meeting
petition of a decade earlier, in May, 1776. It was penned by the Reverend Thomas Allen,
ardent friend of American Independence and of Man's Liberty against Government-over-Man.
It stated why Massachusetts needed a new, basic law of the people, a Constitution to be
adopted by the people only, in part as follows:

"That knowing the strong bias of human nature to tyranny and despotism, we
have nothing else in view but to provide for posterity against the wanton exercise of
power, which cannot otherwise be done than by the formation of a fundamental
constitution."

This petition reflected the sentiments of the frontier, "backwoods"
people of Berkshire County, led by this patriot as head of "The Berkshire
Constitutionalists," over a decade before the 1787 Federal Convention framed the
United States Constitution. These were truly the sentiments of the American people at
large. They are in harmony with the later phrasing of this idea as follows in The
Federalist (number 55, by Madison):

"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree
of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which
justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence."

9. The never-changing need for, and value of, constitutional safeguards against
abuse, or usurpation, of power by public servants--as contemplated, and as provided for,
by The Framers and Adopters of the Constitution in 1787-1788 and by those who proposed,
framed and adopted the first ten Amendments (including the Bill of
Rights made applicable against the Federal, or central, government only)--are due to
the never-changing weaknesses of human nature in government and among the self-governing
people. These weaknesses never change; therefore the need for these safeguards can never
change.

The Conclusion

10. Fear of Government-over-Man was the dominant fear in that day of
uncompromisingly individualistic Americans--Free Men, ever jealous of the safety of
Individual Liberty, of the security of their God-given, unalienable rights against
violation by government.